DiG-DAG: Didactic Game for Divulgation of Understandable Geophysics

Author(s):  
Giuliana D'Addezio ◽  
Valerio Lombardo ◽  
Stefania Conte ◽  
Anna De Santis

<p>Geophysics is the application of the laws and techniques of physics to disclose knowledge about the Earth’s dynamic processes and subsurface structure. It explores phenomena such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis to improve our understanding of the Earth’s physical processes. Effective mitigation of risks from catastrophic geophysics hazards requires knowledge and understanding of natural processes. Scientific divulgation deals with the communication of knowledge previously produced in scientific contexts to a non-expert massive audience.  One of the difficulties science divulgators need to overcome is to explain specific concepts, even complex, from a given discipline in a language simple and understandable, maintaining scientific correctness, and enhance skills, knowledge and competences of their interlocutors.</p><p>Considering that, nowadays, digital technologies play a large role in young people’s lives and games are directly connected to the life of adolescents, we realized an educational videogame to teach geophysics and Earth sciences to low and high-school students; an educational computer game, serious game, where electronic medium with all the characteristic of a gaming environment convey formative outcomes. The starting point is that technologies are systems of open possibilities that can be effectively integrated with innovative methods of education necessary to promote more effective, efficient, attractive and durable learning. In fact, the ardour and enthusiasm that digital games evoke in teenagers has brought many researchers, school leaders and teachers to the question “how video games” can be used to engage young people and support their learning.</p><p>A first stage of the project of Virtual Reality, "Journey inside the volcano", were presented at several scientific divulgative events, such as the ESA Living Planet Symposium, The National Geographic Festival delle Scienze, the September 29th INGV Open Day, involving more that a thousand users and receiving appreciation from the public. We present the serious game and the relate appreciation analysis based on guestbook comments compiled at the end of the experience. The comments reveal a great level of appreciation, involvements and emotions, and margins of improvement. The results foster us to improve the project developing other geophysical topics.</p>

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (120) ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Camilla Bruun Eriksen

This article takes a closer look at the educational computer game Life Calculator (2010) and its attempts to inform young people about health risks and it argues that the game becomes a biopolitical and disciplinary tool. Drawing on the work of Foucault, the article claims that specific bodies are made (im)possible through the game’s strong narrative about Hell, death and health. The article will show how this narrative helps create ’healthy’ and ’liveable’ subject positions (for some) while understandings (of what health is or could be) that differ from the game’s view are stigmatized in the process. Inspired also by Sara Ahmed and her claim that emotions are cultural practices that hold affective power and organize our modes of life, this article is interested in the ways the ‘healthy’ body is understood as tied to life and therefore gets to count as life. The article concludes that health logics are organized and negotiated through a fearsome narrative about the ‘fat’ and ‘unhealthy’ body.


2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 396-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Donovan

In the Australian education system, there are substantial class inequalities in educational outcomes and transitions. These inequalities persist despite increased choice and individual opportunity for young people. This article explores high school students’ experiences of class in a social context they largely believe to be a meritocracy. Specifically, it asks: how does class shape young people’s thinking and decision-making about their post-school futures? I use Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’ as a frame to understand the role of class in young people’s lives, stressing its generative and heterogeneous aspects. Drawing on qualitative-led mixed methods research, this article argues that young people have internalised the ‘doxa’ of meritocracy, agency and ambition, conceiving of themselves as individual agents in this context. However, risk and security, opportunities and constraints, are not distributed equally in a class-stratified society. Young people from working-class backgrounds more commonly imagine insecure, uncertain futures.


Author(s):  
عبد الكريم عبد الجليل الوزان

Today, in light of the tremendous technological development, media has become a requirement of modern life, as it is considered a means of learning about other sciences and cultures. For this, it has become necessary to educate young people in secondary school as an intermediate stage, to study media in all its branches, by including it within the teaching curricula, provided that the scientific components, specialized cadres and necessary equipment are available and to proceed with all that, according to an accurate and organized approach, especially since major countries such as Britain And an Arab like Saudi Arabia has preceded us, albeit in a limited way. This expected step deters young people from media illiteracy, broadens their perceptions at this school stage, helps them to creativity, visualization, extrapolation, and criticism, as well as pushes them to understand what is going on around them in terms of events and facts in various fields, and helps them to shorten their scientific career, by reaching the best The paths of comprehension, understanding, and creativity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahina H ◽  
Dr. Neelima Ranjith

The need and relevance of the concerns for nature and a pro-environmental attitude and behaviour is at its peak in the present world. It has been long recognized that ecological balance and safety of nature is central to human existence on earth. Despite this understanding, human activities are deteriorating the earth. If this situation is allowed to continue, the earth will soon turn out to be a useless and lifeless planet, along with marking the very end of human existence. One way to tackle this crisis is to reduce and prevent human actions that pose threats to nature and environment. A sustainable change in such actions is achieved effectively only by bringing about a change in ethics, values and attitudes of people. Ethics refers to a code of conduct. Values held by people contribute to their ethics. Since values are acquired, it can be instilled into people through different means; also implying that they are changeable. The concept of environmental consciousness refers to specific psychological factors related to individual’s propensity to engage in pro-environmental behaviors (Zelezny & Schultz, 2000:367). Environmental consciousness can also be addressed as the psychological dimension of pro-environmental behavior. Objectives: The purpose of the present study is to investigate the ‘ethical correlates of environmental consciousness among members and non-members of nature club’. Method: (a) Participants: The study was conducted on 54 high school students from various schools in Ernakulam district, Kerala. Participants included both members (n=21) and non-members (n=33) of any kind of nature club. (b) Materials: The Ethical Values Assessment (EVA- Jensen & Padilla, 2004) and New Ecological Paradigm Scale- Revised (NEP Revised-Dunlap, R. E., & Van Liere, K., Mertig, A., &Jones, R. E., 2000). EVA measures 3 categories of ethics, namely: Ethics of Autonomy, Ethics of Community and Ethics of Divinity. NEP scale assesses ecological worldview along 5 dimensions, namely: Reality of Limits to Growth, Ant anthropocentricism, Fragility of Nature’s Balance, Rejection of Exemptionalism and the Possibility of Eco-crisis. (c) Analysis: Analysis was done using ‘t- test’ and ‘correlation’. (d) Results: There is significant difference between members and non-members of nature club in the dimensions Ethics of community, Overall ethics, Overall ecological worldview and Awareness of the possibility of eco-crisis. Students with membership in nature clubs have higher Ethics of community, Overall ethics, Overall ecological worldview (significance at 5% level) and Awareness of the possibility of eco-crisis (significance at 1% level). Also, Overall ethics has a significant positive correlation with Overall ecological worldview. Conclusion: Membership in nature club is found to enhance better environmental consciousness and ethics. The study implies that making students part of nature clubs facilitate pro-environmental behavior and better ethics.


Author(s):  
Adnan Abdulhamid Saati

This research aims at exposing the impact of the variability of presentation ways of visual stimuli and their associated sign-language explanation(visual stimuli without sign-language explanation/ visual stimuli followed by sign-language explanation/ visual stimuli simultaneous with the presentation of sign-language explanation) in educational computer programs on academic achievement of some English words among high school students (deaf group) in the integration program At Ain Jaloot Secondary School and the integration program in Dumah Al Jandal Secondary School. The study population included students of the integration program of the two schools, the sample size was determined and it included (36) deaf students who were randomly distributed into three pilot groups. The prior assessment was applied by using the electronic achievement test prepared by the Quiz Creator application, its reliability and validity were then confirmed by checking the coherence of the three groups. The three pilot groups enrolled for an educational computer program, in which the first group studied the impact of the variability of visual stimuli without sign-language explanation, the second group studied the visual stimuli followed by sign-language explanation, then the third group studied the visual stimuli simultaneous with the presentation of sign-language explanation the groups and each group of the three groups included a sample of 12 deaf students. The results of the study showed: Presence of differences which are statically significant (P value= 0.05) between the average degrees of the three groups in favor of the second group who studied the visual stimuli followed by a sign-language explanation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (9) ◽  
pp. 1740-1746
Author(s):  
Anita Bielawska ◽  
Katarzyna Tomczyk ◽  
Beata Łabuz-Roszak

Introduction: Dietary trends such as consumption of lactose-free and gluten-free products or the use of alternative slimming diets are gaining increasing popularity, especially among young people. They determine their dietary choices, which are important from the point of view of human health. Unconventional diets are still considered as effective weight loss methods. The use of alternative diets may cause shortages of an essential nutrients, increase the risk of chronic non-communicable diseases and lead to the formation of incorrect eating habits. Balanced diet, in contrast to the alternative diet, takes into account the principles of rational nutrition and nutritional recommendations of the Institute of Food and Nutrition (IŻŻ). The aim: To investigate the influence of popular dietary trends on nutrition of high school adolescences. Material and methods: Subjects were adolescences in the age of 17-21 years attending high schools in Ruda Slaska (262 students, including 157 women and 105 men). Self-constructed questionnaire was applied in the study. Participation in the study was anonymous and voluntary. Results: In more than a half of young women (54,8%) and men (52,4%) the body mass deficiency was revealed (BMI<18 kg/m2). 33,6% of the respondents were on the non-balanced diets at least once in their lives. High school students knew gluten-free and lactose-free products but dietary trends, such as the consumption of gluten-free and lactose-free products, did not affect their diet. The main source of nutritional knowledge among respondents were their friends (78,2%). Conclusions: The results of the conducted research indicate the need to implement educational programs on the principles of proper nutrition. The increasing awareness of theyouth in this regard may contribute to reducing the interest in still popular alternative diets among young people and taking appropriate health behaviors by them.


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